Demon Box

“I spik Engliss a little,” says El Mecanico Fantastico.

The Tranny Man recalls reading somewhere how that was where the slur “Spik” came from. “Thank heaven for that,” he says and launches into a description of his plight. The mechanic listens from beneath the tortilla. The sow watches old Chief with voluptuous scorn. Burros trudge past the yard. Small children drift into sight from El Mecanico Fantastico’s shack; they cling to their father’s legs as he listens to the Tranny Man’s tale of mechanical betrayal.

When the tale finally dribbles to an end, EMF asks, “What you want for me to do?”

“To come down to that big garage where they towed it and take the danged transmission out so I can send it to Tucson. See?”

“I see, si,” says the mechanic. “Why you don’t use the big garage mecanicos?”

“They won’t work on it until Monday is why.”

“Are you in such a hurry you cannot wait for Monday?”

“I already called and told Tucson I was shipping the thing back to them by Monday. I like to get on these things while they’re hot, you see.”

“Si, I see,” says El Mecanico Fantastico, fanning himself with the tortilla again. “Hokay. I come down mañana and take it out.”

“Can’t we get on it now? I’d like to be sure of getting it on that train.”

“I see,” says the Mexican. “Hokay. I get my tools and we rent a burro.”

“A burro?”

“From Ernesto Diaz. To carry my tools. The big garage locks their tools in a iron box.”

“I see,” says the Tranny Man, beginning to wonder how to pin down a reasonable estimate for labor, tools and a burro.

Suddenly there is a big brodie of squeals and yelps in the dust. The sow’s red-bristled boar friend has dropped in and caught Chief making eyes at his lady. By the time they are pulled apart Chief has one ear slashed and has lost both canines in the boar’s brick hide.

But that isn’t the worst of it. Giving away all that weight has been too much for dog’s aged hindquarters. Something is dislocated. He has to ride back down strapped atop a second burro. The ride pops the dislocation back in so he can walk again by evening, but he is never able afterward to lift a hind leg without falling over.

Him and His Wife Again

They’ve been there a week now. They are flat-tiring back from the beach to the south in a rented Toyota open-top. The left rear blew out miles back. There is no spare. And a ruptured radiator hose is spewing steam from under the dash so they can barely see the road ahead.

Finally the wife asks, “You’re going to just keep driving it?”

“I’m going to drive the sonofabitch back to the sonofabitch that rented me the sonofabitch and tell him to shove this piece of broken Jap junk up his overpriced greaser ass!”

“Well, drop the dog and me off at the Blums’ first, then, if you’re going to—if we get close.”

She didn’t say If you’re going to make a scene. There was steam and furor enough.

His Friends

The Tranny Man missed the before-siesta mail out and he’s promised himself to get a letter to his sister finished to take down to the post office when it opens after siesta. He’s at the Blums’ rented villa, alone except for Chief. The dog is stretched on a woven mat, tongue out and eyes open. Wally Blum’s at the beach surfcasting. The Tranny Man doesn’t know where Betty Blum and his wife have gone.

The Blums’ hacienda is not down in Gringo Gulch but up on the town’s residential slopes. The yard of a shack across the canyon-of-a-street is level with his window, and three little girls smile at him across the narrow chasm. They keep calling Hay-lo mee-ster, then ducking back out of sight in the foliage of a mango tree and giggling.

That tree is the whole neighborhood’s social center. Kids play in its shade. Birds fly in and out of its branches. Two pigs and a lot of chickens prowl the leafy rubble at its roots. All kinds of chickens—chickens scrawny and chickens bald, chickens cautious and chickens bold. The only thing the chickens seem to have in common is freedom and worthlessness.

The Tranny Man watches the chickens with a welcome disdain. What good can they be, too sick to lay, too skinny to eat? What possible good? Inspired by the inefficiency, he launches into his letter:

“Dear Sis: Gawd, wot a country! It is too poor to know it’s ignorant and too ignorant to know it’s poor. If I was Mexico you know what I would do? I would attack the U.S. just to qualify for foreign aid when we whup ‘em (ha ha). Seriously, it sure isn’t what I had hoped, I can tell you that.”

A green mango bounces off the grill of his window. More giggles. He reads the last line with a sigh and lays down his ballpoint.